TELEVISION; For Peter Mayle, It's a 'Year' That Never Ends

Even on a damp, gray day, with almond blossoms thrown to the ground by the dreaded mistral and the author himself wrapped in wool to fight off a cold, Peter Mayle's honey-colored stone house seemed familiar. There were the vineyards lovingly cared for by Faustin, the swimming pool that Bernard would soon come to clean, the radiators installed amid much dust and debate by Monsieur Menicucci. All just as promised in Mr. Mayle's best-selling book, "A Year in Provence."

Now it is about to become even more familiar. The first of four two-hour episodes serializing the book will be broadcast tonight at 8 and midnight on the Arts and Entertainment cable network; it will retell the folksy story of the Provencal characters met, the sumptuous meals consumed and the myriad discomforts suffered during the year that Peter and Jenny Mayle spent fixing up their 200-year-old farm outside Menerbes, in the shadow of the Luberon mountains. Tonight's episode covers the months of January, February and March; subsequent installments will cover three months each and be seen in May, August and October.

The Mayles have at least been spared the discomfort of reliving the experience for the purposes of television. This time another house was used, 10 miles up the valley. Two Britons, John Thaw and Lindsay Duncan, play the writer and his wife (called Annie in the serial in deference to Jenny Mayle's desire to maintain a low profile), while French actors play the assorted local yokels and prim Parisians who people the book. Mr. Mayle is even happy with Michael Sadler's adaptation and the BBC's production. "It's as accurate a reflection of the book as possible," he said, "which is not easy. Five pages of descriptive writing can go in one 30-second shot."

But there is a downside, or at least Mr. Mayle presumes there will be, to the additional fame and fortune that "A Year in Provence" on television will bring. Already the success of the book, which has sold more than one million copies in Britain and more than 600,000 in the United States, meant that loyal readers would drive far out of their way to come knocking at his door to ask for an autograph. Most were, of course, Britons, and he is now bracing for more: the BBC is currently broadcasting the serial in 12 half-hour episodes.

"The summer of 1991 was the worst," the soft-spoken, 53-year-old writer recalled. "It made us wonder whether we had lost all our peace. Most people just wanted a picture and an autograph. But a day without some visitor arriving out of the blue was unusual. Many brought marmalade because I mention in the book that I like marmalade. I think the marmalade pots now outnumber wine bottles in the cellar. Last year things eased off. But it may, of course, start all over again."

The exposure, though, has done nothing to put Mr. Mayle off life in the Luberon. "We came here because we loved France," he said, "and that feeling is just as strong today, six years later. We were attracted by the food and climate, but it was also a combination of details that did it for us. The British and American countryside is interesting, but if you want to spend an evening over dinner and wine, this is only possible in France."

Mr. Mayle certainly did not come here to "get away from it all." He had done that when he gave up a career in advertising in London and New York and moved to Devon, England, in the mid-1970's to dedicate himself to writing. He had already had great success with a children's book on the facts of life called "Where Did I Come From?" He followed it up with a book on puberty called "What's Happening to Me?"

But the sheer grayness of Devon got him down. "We always came to the Luberon in the summer," he said. "We even bought a piece of land near Gordes but couldn't afford to build on it. One day, more despondent than normal about returning to Devon, we thought, 'If we don't do something now, we never will.' So we decided to buy the next year."

By now, the conversation had moved to Le Mas Tourteron, a restaurant in another stone house a few miles away. And for a few moments, attention focused on the menu, packed with dishes described in the same succulent detail that made "A Year in Provence" a gourmet's delight. Little venison pie with foie gras and forest cream, truffled chicken from Bresse with little quenelles in bouillon and, of course, local red wine, Cotes du Luberon.

"I did come here with the idea of writing a novel," Mr. Mayle continued. "I thought I'd just sit there in green tranquillity. But I couldn't even sit down for four months. My agent kept asking how I was doing. I said I was going nowhere because of the distractions. So he said, 'Well, why not write about them?' I wrote a couple of chapters and, God bless him, he found a publisher."

From then on, all the pain and suffering had a purpose. "Everything catastrophic became useful," he recalled. "Up to that point, I had kept a halfhearted diary. After that, I took copious notes and the chapters more or less wrote themselves." And in the process, though he didn't know it at that time, a flourishing cottage industry was being born.

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The first printing was just 3,000 copies. But the book was excerpted by The Sunday Times of London and began to take off, leading to months on best-seller lists, first in Britain, then in the United States. With material he had not used, he wrote a sequel, "Toujours Provence," which was also a best seller. Meanwhile, a collection of his magazine articles was published under the title "Expensive Habits." And "Hotel Pastis," the novel he planned to write six years ago (about an advertising executive who buys a hotel in, yes, Provence), will finally come out this summer.

Yet while the two Provence books have provided millions of readers -- not only Britons and Americans, but also Germans, Japanese, Brazilians and many others -- with a strong image of this region and even of France as a whole, the French have no idea how they are being portrayed: neither book has been translated here. Indeed, Mr. Mayle is largely unknown in France. And he seems relieved. "If the French version were a success, there'd be even more people driving up to the house," he said. "Anyhow, I don't think it would work in French."

Since the French cannot sniff at his version of France, then, it has been left to Britons, with their legendary love-hate for their neighbors, to complain that the French are being caricatured. This, at least, was the lament of some British critics after the first episode of the serial was broadcast by the BBC last month. "An idiotic concoction of travelogue shots, condescending portraits of comical French artisans and hammed-up linguistic clumsiness," bemoaned Thomas Sutcliffe in The Independent.

Closer by, Paul Eddy, a British journalist and Menerbes resident, has taken to denouncing the "unrecognizable caricatures" of real people in "A Year in Provence" and warning readers off the television version. "Mr. Mayle, as portrayed by John Thaw, will doubtless make his smug progress through the seasons, ever-genial, ever-tolerant, ever-condescending toward those canny, oh-so-colorful masons and their funny local mores," he wrote in The Times of London.

Yet in conversations with locals, even in Menerbes's Cafe du Progres, a beer-and-pastis bar that Mr. Eddy claimed was "much maligned" by Mr. Mayle, it was hard to find anyone unhappy about "the English writer." Admittedly, the cafe's owner, Georges Cazeneuve, who was described as "gruff" in "A Year in Provence," did note somewhat gruffly that he had never seen Mr. Mayle. But Lucien Clement, his barman, pronounced that "all publicity is good for Menerbes."

Mr. Mayle said he gave copies of the book to his main characters and helped them translate relevant bits "so they'd know what to expect if parties of Britons or Americans came looking to see if they matched the description." But he said the book's purpose was escapism. "I chose not to write about the days things went wrong," he said, "but the truth is that it reflected my thrill to live here -- that I could deal with problems with a sense of humor that I wouldn't have, say, in London or New York."

Yet even the world that viewers will see on television has already changed. Massot, the old fox-eating peasant who lived in a nearby shaded gully, sold his house and moved away. Christian the architect also left the area, and Monsieur Menicucci, the plumber, retired. But Didier the mason stops by every few months, while the Mayles dine occasionally with Bernard. Most reassuring, the good neighbor Faustin still cares for the vineyards and delivers wisdom over a glass of wine.

Back at the farmhouse, Mr. Mayle looked out at leafless trees and stumps of vines resembling witches' hands and felt optimistic. "In a few weeks, it will all come alive," he mused. "It happens so quickly."

He waved at what looked like a field of alfalfa. "That's what feeds Faustin's rabbits," he went on. "Sometimes there's a knock on the door and Henriette, his wife, thrusts a warm plastic bag into our hands and says, 'There, I just killed him.' And no, I don't have a British reaction of horror. I'll say, 'Great, how much does it weigh?' "

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A version of this article appears in print on March 21, 1993, on Page 2002031 of the National edition with the headline: TELEVISION; For Peter Mayle, It's a 'Year' That Never Ends. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe